Whilst in ASDA yesterday I saw a bottle of Heston Blimminhecks gin with lemon and Earl grey for £23.99 So I bought a bottle of bog std. gin and I am going to have a go at making some myself. I also spotted some salty caramel vodka for a similar price so W'rose have supplied me with a salty caramel essence and I am going to give that a go as well. Christmas can't come soon enough !!!!! Sorry for mentioning the 'C' word so early in the year......

You mat also want to try this I will have a bash when Blackberries are readyngredients:

A litre bottle of gin or vodka, two thirds full200g of sugarApproximately 300g of blackberriesWhat to do:

1. Pour the sugar into the bottle of vodka, using a funnel

2. Shake well (with the lid on, obviously) until the sugar is well dissolved

3. Stuff the fruit into the top until the bottle is completely full up. This was around 300g of blackberries in this case, but just keep on going until the bottle is full. Shake again.

4. Store in cool dark place. Check on it every few days or once a week for the first month or so and give it a good shake.

5. Leave it for at least three months before drinking. Ideally, you could leave it about two years for the flavours to really infuse the vodka. But, I should say, the very best sloe gin I ever drank was 21 years old.

Common sense is not so commonA brain is as strong as it's weakest think

I have some strawberries and some vodka which I'm thinking of mixing together with some sugar to make a liqueur for later in the year. Question is, do I cut or mush the strawberries up or leave them whole?

Decided to just go for it so I now have a batch of Strawberry & Black Pepper Vodka infusing. When the strawberries have done their thing in the vodka I shall probably mix them with some more strawberries and make some Strawberry & Vodka Jam.

I make my own home made wine, at a loose end yesterday I went foraging to see what was about

I found a clump of Rosebay willow Herb, & thought why not, they were coming to an end but I was in a field with Cover in it so once again though why not.I have combined the two , found no recipe so did my own thing.Will be interesting to see what it turns out like, at the moment it is bubbling away well, fingers crossed.

Next up will be Elderberry, I have Elder flower on the go now, also Blackberry. as I found some lurking in the freezer from last year.

Terry

Common sense is not so commonA brain is as strong as it's weakest think

The SG was 1114, this will give a wine of 14% if it ferments out to complete dryness SG990, if fermentation stops before then you will get a sweeter wine with less alcohol.When fermentation has finished add 1 crushed Camden tablet 1 tsp Potassium Sorbate & 1 tsp Bentonite (this clears the wine)Terry

Last edited by hickybank on July 29th, 2015, 8:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

Common sense is not so commonA brain is as strong as it's weakest think

That reminds me, it's time for me to decant my "walnut wine". It's been settling for about a fortnight, so the sludge should be fairly well compacted by now.

--All the bestIanhttp://www.souvigne.comThe Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.

Bentonite does a great job, but it looks disgusting doesn't it Ian.For those that don't know it, it is a Montmorillite clay, when the granules are mixed with warm water it turns into a grey sludge that looks awful, but as it sinks it picks up all the inclusions that make the wine cloudy & leaves you with a crystal clear wine

Common sense is not so commonA brain is as strong as it's weakest think

Well we tried a quick snifter of the Strawberry & Black Peppercorn Vodka last night a week on from the ingredients being put together. A lovely strawberry colour with nice strwberry flavour and a warm background from the black peppercorns. I have addedmore strawberries today.

hickybank wrote:Bentonite does a great job, but it looks disgusting doesn't it Ian.

Sorry, missed this reply. I buy it in fine granules, about the size and shape of those chocolate vermicelli one used to use to decorate biscuits and stuff. Like that it looks fine, but once it's made into a slurry, yes, it looks pretty awful. But it works extremely well, especially on solids containing protein, which egg white and dried blood aren't so good at settling.

Oddly enough I first discovered it about many years ago, in 1970 or '71 when I was doing up our garden in our "new" house. We had a friend called James was was a civil engineer, specialising in dams, and he was using Bentonite to create a waterproof membrane in a leaking earth dam near Halifax. We "helped" by clearing some of the peat that had been piled down below the main part of the dam to consolidate it (it merely made things worse, because peat acts as a sponge and sucks the water into itself). Several loads made a brilliant addition to London clay for a rhododendron and azalea bed.

>Seatallan, I have been making a traditional Correzian recipe for many years, which is unusual amongst products of this type by needing very long maceration- just under 12 months. By that time, the green walnuts turn into a pretty gruesome brown sludge. So remembering what I'd learnt way back in my winemaking days, I decided that fining was the right way to go, and started using Bentonite to do it. Not having sophisticated equipment, what I do is to use my big balloon whisk to whisk the slurry into to the claggy wine and then fill bottles with it, After about 3 weeks to a month the bentonite has done its work, and the solids have left suspension and coagulated to form a reasonably solid mass below, so I just pour the wine off the top, and keep the deposit for a second settling. Because the wine has been in contact with the green walnuts for so long, it has absorbed a lot of tannins, and so I then leave it to age for a year once clarified. The wine throws out a lot of these tannins and improves considerably. When I'm feeling frisky, I then separate a second time, so the wine doesn't have to be poured carefully off the tannin co-polymers which have settled out on the side of the bottle.

However, last year one of our guests, who normally brought me a litre or two of his own walnut oil couldn't, as the fertilisation of the walnut trees had been zapped by cold wet weather at their flowering time, so he brought me some of his own walnut wine. We tasted it and, honestly, preferred it to our own. So this year that's what I've made. An added advantage is that it only takes 40 days to make though like the Correzian one I made in the past, it improves with some ageing. I'm due to fine and bottle it on the 17th of this month.

--All the bestIanhttp://www.souvigne.comThe Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.

Thanks Hicks, well it has nearly had one day in steeping mode and I have to buy sugar tomorrow and try to find yeast and nutriment, I do have brewers yeast but not nutriment. Seem to remember seeing citric acid in a cupboard somewhere as well.

Well the 2 3litre plastic bottles are sitting comfortably in the greenhouse fermenting away. I did not have any citric acid so read up about it and decided to use rhubarb juice instead. It seems to be working and the colour has improved from a muddy brown to a paler brown. We shall see how much longer it needs to ferment.

I constructed the Salty caramel vodka yesterday, It is wonderful !!!! Vodka, salty caramel essence from W'rose and sugar to your personal taste. Even Mr. Z said he liked it, not sure it will improve anymore - given time. Not sure it will last very long either !!!!

I have just hydrometered my two 3 litre bottles of grape vine snipping wine, one is 9.5 and the other is 10.0. Thankfully they have now finished fermenting as the fluffy gang were getting fed up of being 'hissed' at !!! I shall let them sit a while then syphon off the clearest stuff and at some stage add egg white with a pinch of salt (to help it clear). Then I suppose it will need to be bottled up and laid to rest until Valentines day. I may just have to try some over Chri***as to make sure it has not gone off !!!!!

Mmmm, I finished off about 6 S'berries after lunch....... Now know what I should have done with them.

We have just been out for a quick walk and collected victoria plums, cherry plums and bullis all in HUGE profusion this season. The farmers maize is not ripe yet, will have to come back in a few weeks, the chickens adore it.

cheshire-cheese wrote:Just to pop back to the original post and hickybank's reply: I've not tried either, so it's only a hunch, but wouldn't infusing lemon zest be more fragrant than adding the juice?

Hi cheshire cheese, in my original post it does say or infuse with lemon slices, I think this would work better than just the zest.Her by the way is a Tia Maria recipe,I have not tried but will be making shortly

I The answer to both questions is I don't know having never made it, the recipe is taken from an old wine circle book of members recipes

Canp coffee is chicory based so tastes totally different to instant, & I think the orange is there for balance, I will only know the answers after I have tried it,I will report back & if you try it please let me know what you use & how it turns out.Cheers ]Terry

Common sense is not so commonA brain is as strong as it's weakest think